Demon's Virtue
chapter-688

Eiro watched the villagers settle into their new homes from afar. For the time being, they just had to settle in. Tears were shed, and the mood was tense. Even though they had made the choice to come here themselves, they never had any choice in whether or not to leave the village they lived in until just a few hours ago. Eiro had forced them to leave, because that was the only way for the villagers to get out of this unharmed. They only had a choice in where they were going to end up after leaving.

And now that they had arrived, and Eiro had properly informed the leaders of each group of monsters, he moved on to some more important matters. Looking at the now abandoned village through the eyes of one of the crows, it seemed like the Devil still hadn't noticed what happened, or at least, he hadn't done anything in reaction just yet, so Eiro had some time to finish up a project he had been preparing for this occasion.

Eiro looked at Mislan, who had returned back to the Demon for now. Since he was originally Eiro's shadow, he could return to him whenever necessary. Eiro looked at him and smiled lightly, "Thanks for you work today. Could you steer the ship back to the manor? I want to do some more work on it before I give it to the craftsmen here to have it replicated."

"As you wish," Mislan nodded with a slight bow, and Eiro quickly lifted off, heading back to the manor first. The ship was useful and much faster than carriages, but flying on his own was still much, much faster. And he couldn't waste too much time right now. Eiro quickly approached the manor, flicking his wrist as he got closer to open the library's window in front of him. He folded his wings into his back, quickly approaching the bookshelf on the library's second layer. After entering the right 'passcode', he soon opened up the door to the hidden library, which had now become home to a lot of Eiro's personal projects. While it was practically impossible for someone to enter this manor with malicious intent in the first place, just in case, Eiro kept all the things that he wanted hidden, such as writing that he couldn't just freely show to others, rare documents and books that he needed to keep safe, as well as objects that he couldn't just let others see or get their hands on whatsoever.

He quickly approached the thing that he had placed onto the other side of the room. It was a large jar that was filled with a mass of deep red flesh. It was the replicated flesh of the Devil that Eiro had started growing after he got his hands on a sample from Zeke. The mass of flesh wasn't as big as it could be, though; in order to prepare for the rest of this project, Eiro had to cut off parts of it once it got big enough to take back some of the Devil's essence so that he could use it to grow a tree. And using that tree's wood, Eiro created a number of prosthetics. It was a prosthetic skeleton, and Eiro had created all the joints and bones that he could. On top of that, for some of the more important places, such as the hands, legs, wings, and even the face, Eiro had created full prosthetics so that once the devil's flesh was added into the mix, it would just be the 'base' that was needed to make everything work properly.

And then, Eiro looked at his wooden hand, flipping open a latch on his palm. It was a small 'storage' compartment that he had created for when he wanted to syphon mana off someone or something. It held a small array that would stabilize the mana inside of it. Right now it held the mana that the crows had taken off the villagers when they removed the marks off them. Eiro approached the jar, placing his wooden hand onto it, before quickly fusing the Devil's flesh with the stolen mana. It practically seemed to thrive with this new energy; its colour, which had started to fade the larger the mass of flesh grew, was returning into a deep, vibrant blood-like red.

With a grin that he wasn't able to keep down, Eiro pushed his hands into the jar, pulling the mass of flesh out of it. The liquified arcane magic started to crystalize on its outside, now that it was no longer being stabilized in its liquid form through the jar. Which was good for now, since it would keep the mass 'contained' and 'stable' for the time being. The Demon brought it over to the table that had the wooden skeleton laid out on it, and quickly got to work. Using flesh magic to manipulate the mass, he pulled chunks off of it and pushed it onto the skeleton, as though he was molding clay. Piece by piece, he shaped a body on top of the wooden bones, and before long, it was time to place the rest of the parts into the body before closing it up. In this case, he really just needed one more thing. Eiro walked up to a small box he had placed on one of the desks in the room. Inside of it was a small, pale red crystal. It was barely the size of his pinky's fingernail, but it was more than enough.

This was a crystalization of his Life Force. Different to the mana crystals that were growing in his body, his life force hadn't reached the level of creating these on its own yet, so Eiro had to forcefully save up some over the course of a few days to create this. Since this wasn't just created from blood, but the force keeping him alive that was diffused into his flesh and blood, the Bloodstone that he had fused into his veins sadly didn't help him with this. It was both annoying to create, since Life Force was much more unstable outside of a living body than mana was, but with some trial and error, he managed to get there.

Eiro placed the small crystal into the chest of the body that he was building up, and then closed up any and all unnecessary openings, before letting the life force of the crystal flow and permeate throughout the body. Using the techniques he learned under Jura, he manipulated this life force and tried to create a natural flow throughout this unliving body, starting to fuse the flesh and the wooden limbs and bones into a single body.

And then, once he was satisfied, he pressed his palm onto the body's chest, pouring his own mana into it as much as he could.

"Wake up, Diabolus" he whispered, and the flesh began to pulsate. It immediately began to adjust its own shape, redistributing as it was needed. Skin was growing on the flesh's surface, and strong muscles formed around the bones. The body's back arched as the bones were pulled into the correct positions, before the newborn servant went limp again.

It slowly recovered, and pushed itself off the table, standing up to kneel down in front of Eiro.

"Perfect," the Demon grinned broadly as he stared at the figure in front of him. While its limbs, face, and wings were completely wooden, it was undeniable that this servant 'felt' like the Devil. It was the result of being created with that being's essence. If it was like this, then Eiro was sure that Diabolus would be as useful to him as he expected.

Eiro handed him a suit, which was tailored to resemble the suit the Devil wore as closely as possible. After the servant got dressed, Eiro told it to follow him outside. There, he took a seat, and had Diabolus test out its body. Since Eiro used a lot of mana to create it, he was sure that Diabolus wasn't weak, though combat wasn't really its purpose. But it was still important for Eiro to know exactly how its physical abilities ended up. Different to other servants, this one had a direct physical form and limitations, and would be damaged if overdoing things, similar to any other living being. More than a servant created from magic, Diabolus was a lot closer to a Homunculus; an artificial living being.

"Now, try to fly," Eiro commanded it, and it quickly began to flap the wooden wings on its back. Its body slowly lifted off the ground, and before long, the Servant grew confidence in using its body and began to be able to move around more effectively, including in its flight.

"... is... that..." Ariella stepped out into the garden. Eiro turned toward her and nodded, "This is the servant I told you I would create," the Demon explained. Ariella's expression was complicated. Not only did this servant look close to identical to the Devil, but it also gave off a similar feeling, so it was hard for her to not feel complicated and even nearly enraged at this sight. The Devil was the being that Ariella hated the most in this world, after all. Eiro held her hand as she sat down as well.

"Don't worry. I doubt I'll have much for a use for it after the Devil is dead, so you can feel free to burn it to the ground once we're done with it," Eiro smiled lightly, but Ariella just shook her head slowly, "No... as long as the real deal is dead, I don't care what happens to this... thing."

"Hmm, I see. Well, we can still talk about this later. For now, we probably should get ready to head out," Eiro said, looking at the sky. There was the slightest discoloration from the sunset. That meant that soon, the being that fetched the Devil's food would appear at the village. This was the latest point that the Devil would end up finding out about what happened. And then, he would move to a different place, which was the perfect moment for Eiro and the others to strike.